The subject at hand is not who put the overalls in Mrs. Murphy's
existential chowder but who is the mole in Mr. Control's Circus.
Control, as John le Carré followers know, is the director of British
Intelligence. The Circus is his sad collection of far-flung agents, now
for the most part disabused old cold warriors who stay numb in order to
survive or glumly hope that "somewhere the path of pain and betrayal
must end." And a mole? A mole, of course, is a turncoat working for a
foreign government....